5 Key Things You Should Know If You Promised Yourself To Make Money Online

So, you get all excited about making money online, right? I was SO excited when I first found out that I could make money online. That was back in 2007 when I first found out about blogging.

Actually I was away from home, at the Lancaster University, UK for my Ph. D. That was the first time EVER I was away from home, since I was born. Can you imagine?

I felt really lonely. I missed my mom, dad and everything else back home. Just to replace my loneliness with something else, I started hanging out online.

I usually visited sites that allowed me to download movies, forums, and … well, you guessed it right, BLOGS!

After a few months I started reading about blogging and people who are successfully making money by having a blog. I got super excited. Just as you are super excited now!

I immediately started my blog in blogspot (Blogger platform) and started post just about anything. There was no business goal; there was no business in fact.

I was simply updating the blog for the sake of having a blog hoping that having a blog will make me money. Conventionally, I put up Adsense ad banners (what else did you think?)

And to my surprise (at that time), I didn’t make any money nor did I achieve anything with my blog – coz I didn’t actually know what I was trying to achieve, except the end result I expected was to make money online from home – but I didn’t know how I was going to achieve that goal.

Two years passed and after learning some hard lessons, I moved to having a self-hosted WordPress blog. And, Problogging Success was born on August, 2011.

Again, there was no business goal for the first few months. It was in 2012 March where I started sitting down and thinking what I was doing. Till that date I made nothing apart from a few pennies in Adsense. That got me thinking!

I realized making money online is no joke. And I realized certain things that are crucial to make money online – I am going to share those things here with you.

PS: A little note here – for all those who want to make money online free or make money without any investment, I would say you will be disappointed. If you want to treat your online business as a business, be prepared to do your investment.

A blog won’t make money by itself

This is the #1 and the biggest mistake I made in my earlier days! I thought starting a blog, publishing some posts and putting up adsense banners was it. Boy I was SO wrong and I took SO long to realize that. I wasted almost TWO years during my initial days because of this wrong thought.

And that is why I am putting out this word as loud as I can. A blog won’t make money by itself.

In fact the concept of “make money blogging” is wrongly perceived by bloggers – They think “make money blogging” means one can start a blog and make money by “monetizing” a blog. That is SO wrong.

Value matters in the end (or I should say right from the start)

It’s all about value in the end – you should really realize this at the start. To be precise, your business really starts when you start offering value. Until then you are probably wasting your time and you are wasting your efforts as well.

This is why it is necessary that you should put in the time and effort at the very start to first decide your business (point #1) and then understand your market very well.

Only if you understand someone, you can help them and be valuable to them, right?

Clarity first, action next

Many bloggers (including me at my earlier stages) spend a lot of time on action. Now action is great, because without action nobody can proceed and no one can think about achieving success. But something else is more important than action and it is clarity.

Without clarity, action will be wasted. That is for sure. And action being wasted is no joke because there is time, money and lots of effort that are contained in the word “action”.

Clarity is highly crucial for any business and you should start with clarity – not doing some random things and “see” if they will work. You should start doing things only when you are clear why you are doing it and what you are expecting from it.

Let me say that again:

Why are you doing what you are doing?

What do you expect as outcome from what you are doing?

These two questions give you a head start to think about getting clarity with your business goals and you should really spend time to sit down and write down your clear purposes, your goals, what you are trying to achieve and things like that.

Only after you have got clarity, you should start developing an action plan.

In my e-book Problogging Action Plan, I make bloggers do this exactly. Before they devise an action plan and before they get into action, I make them identify their goals first so that their actions won’t be wasted later. You might want to grab a copy of the book if you haven’t yet.

You must get professional help

Something that I really ignored and paid a price a bit later was not getting professional help for my business. I didn’t know the importance getting pro help. I could have saved years in my learning curve – and this is no joke.

It is really hard to keep trying things, make errors and then correct course. Of course, I like that type of learning where you find out what works by trial and error. But when you are building a business where you have to really get there fast because you have commitments under your belt, you cannot be wasting years in learning things.

Besides, if there’s someone else who has exactly traveled your path and if that someone is willing to offer you help I don’t see a reason why you shouldn’t be availing it!

In the field of blogging and internet marketing there are people who have traveled the rough path and who have experience in finding out what works and what doesn’t work. And if such people are offering help you should absolutely get help from them and move on, seriously.

You can count on me here. I do provide consultation and blog audits – if a blogger like you already has a blog I make a detailed analysis of their blog, their goals and help them find out what is missing. If you are planning to start a blog, I provide consultation and audit of your new business idea so you don’t waste time and effort on something that isn’t’t worth it.

Work smart for your business’s sake

I don’t believe in luck. It is one of my values. I only believe in smart work – and, not hard work. Now, I do see many bloggers who boast about working hard. They say they work 16 hours a day on their blog and business.

I do love working long hours and getting things done. In fact, even today I do work like that on some days of the week – when I am overflowing with enthusiasm and creative ideas that I cannot put them off. But having to work 16 hours a day (compulsorily) in order to keep your business afloat is not the kind of work I am talking about.

You should work smart – meaning, you should often stop and look back and analyze your strategies, goals etc. I do this every week on a lighter basis and every month on an in-depth basis.

Make it a regular practice to spend around 30 mins to stop and look at what you are doing. Download the “5 keys to making money online” PBS success sheet and work it out.

Pausing often and analyzing what you are doing helps keep you on track. You will also be able to identify what works and what doesn’t. Without such a regular analysis, you could be wasting time on stuff that doesn’t work or stuff that are not worth it.

Time for action!

So, you want to make money online, right? You need to take action. Before that, you need to get clarity.

Here’s a success sheet for you to download, print and complete.

Remember, clarity and action will give you results. Merely reading this post and leaving won’t!

Before you leave, here’s what I want you to do:

Download the success sheet, (optionally, print) and complete it. You can complete the sheet on your computer without printing it out too.

Leave a comment below and let us know which of these 5 things is stopping you the most.

Share this post in your social circle so your friends can benefit too!

How long would you say it takes for a blog to gain some SERP traction? Also, when would you start analyzing your data in Google Analytics? I just think that you need some data before you can draw some exact conclusions.

I agree with what you said here…..
One of the first things that always kill bloggers is having the wrong mindset about blogging. If you really want to make money with your blog then, you have to develop the right blogging mindset. Thanks for sharing this…

I think you said it all within these 5 points mentioned, which are vital for making money online. However, money should never be on your mind when you start blogging, which is in-fact in the mind of most bloggers, or perhaps they venture into the blogging world after hearing and seeing their friends who have achieved a great deal, so feel they’d do the same.

Blogging takes a lot of hard work and effort! Yes, you need to work smart and not hard, something I’m now learning to do, but still not all that good at it. Giving value to your readers in a clear and simple way IS the key I would say and every blogger must concentrate on that first – money follows later, and even if it doesn’t, at least you know you have done your best.

I felt nostalgic after reading this post. Most of the times newbies starts with ‘blogger’ platform and ends up with self hosted ‘WordPress’. Yes I agree that it is the value which matters the most. But how many of them are thinking about it. From my perspective building trust is the key aspect for everyone who wants to make money online. If you are successful in adding value to the content and helping people then automatically you can see some growth in your income. I always advise newbies to concentrate on content rather than money. Thanks for sharing. Have a great weekend ahead.

Thank you for sharing this content! You know….I´ve hired your services in order to set up a well designed blog and you have done a very good job. Now it is time to me to do a more Advanced plan. I need to learn good strategies to use my blog to promote some products and services.

I agree with you. Blogging is not a joke. It requires lot of hard work. A blogger needs to spend lot of time for getting success. Large number of newbie leave blogging just in few days. I think patience, hark work, SEO and fresh contents are the success of blogging. I also have a technology website with PR 2 rating, Alexa rank-3,12,000 and over +200 articles. But still unsatisfied with site traffic.

I need your suggestion on how to bring more traffic on my technology website?

I got shocked with your early days of blogging as it seems like mine. Seriously, i am looking for the product to offer through AM from my blog. But I am bit struggling to start as I don’t know how and where to start. As you told, that a blogger should help from pro, i think it would be better to use your blog audit.

Will catch you reg. this matter and yeah, smart work matters a lot.

Thanks for sharing this nice post with us Jane, keep writing your experiences for us

I have read many a posts asking you to pick a topic you like to blog on. Because its the only thing you’ll not get bore with. So, yes blogging for money may not be a good idea to start with. Because earning will not be so much in earlier times of a blog but your attention will be at its apex level when you start a blog. With the passage of time your blog will be earning money for you and whats the better thing if you can earn from what you like to do?

It takes time and a lot of efforts to make money online. If somebody say the opposite, probably doesn’t have any clue about making money online. I am not talking about coins, but about decent income. This require complete dedication.

I blog for two reasons. I love to write, and to make money. Like many bloggers, my main problem is traffic, being a great challenge to get meaningful numbers. I have to agree. after a year-and-a-half and 140 articles, something more has to be done other than posting your articles on social media sites, and investing money into your business is probably it.

Blogging is one of the best way of earning money online and we earn hundred time better money instead of any other way but we need to devolve something creative and attractive then we will be able to make one successful blog.

One of the first things that always kill bloggers is having the wrong mindset about blogging. If you really want to make money with your blog then, you have to develop the right blogging mindset. Thanks for sharing this…

I am completely agree with your points, for making money you just can’t rely on things to work automatically. Many people do blogging for making money but they often quit blogging soon when they see it’s not an easy job. Only people who are passionate and has clear vision can make money.

What a great and honest post! Seriously, I believe the best points here are – a blog isn’t going to make money by itself and building your brand. We get a lot of clients who open online storefronts and blogs and just expect the money to start rolling in “while they sleep” as some of the more corrupt IM crowd still peddle (and get away with!).

Hey Amarpreet, there is nothing wrong with bloggers thinking making money blogging easy because the IM world is painted so positive by some “gurus” who continuously proclaim “you can do it – no matter what”. They also keep selling quick fix products that claim to help you make money in 30 days!

As in all activities, it seems to me that the most important factor is persistence. Do not be discouraged quickly. Focus on one thing at a time is also important. Keeping one god, it pays more in longer perspective than setting up a new page every moment of hope in that one of it will earn us more money.

Dether – so true – and this also comes back to doing things consistently. When something doesn’t work (testing for a very short time), dropping it and moving on to another strategy is not a smart thing. With blogging, you gotta stick to things consistently to be able to see real results.

Even I started the blog with a reason to earn at the leisure of home while blogging about thing that I love. But as you said we must take pro help rather then inventing all the things ourselves but I guess I faced the same situation as yours but now I am thinking getting a professional help to ramp up my blog.

Blogging, making money , driving traffic these are some of the basic topic which newbie bloggers seeks most. Everything is important when it comes to blogging. You can not simply neglect small thing. Creating backlinks, social media followers, good articles, SEO, moderation, monitizing . I completely agree with your points. I will look forward to learn more from you .

Clarity first, Action next, the most important concept for Newbie internet marketers or bloggers. Put your effort in the right direction, experience and experimenting does work, but it costs you a lot of time.

I agree with you that a successful blogger to make money online needs to be passionate about what she/he is writing about..Just being passionate is not enough we need to use the right tools to brand the content we publish .Any blogger who is new to blogging should take the help of pro to accelerate the success of blog. Thanks for these wonderful tips.

This is such a great post, especially the first tip. So many people think that the blog itself will make money – but a blog is really just a marketing device, a tool to help you sell something else – even if that something else is advertising space. Thanks for sharing!

I write article about science, health and psychology, so I have broken the rule of specializing in one subject. I also sell my books on the site. Been doing it for a year-and-a-half., and yes it’s difficult to make money. The main reason is traffic. I’m stuck at about 3,000 to 4,000 hits a month. My books are also eclectic…sales, physical fitness cooking, etc.

I find writing about one specific subject boring, but I love writing about interesting topics. Since I love doing that, I feel that’s my best chance for success because I’ll be consistent.

I have just now started by blogging career and I wish success in this field. I learnt many things form experienced persons like you. I understood Blogging simply keeping money in mind would not give us success. Thanks for sharing this.

iI agree with your article! i came to blogging mainly for the passion, But later only i realize passion is not enough for making money in blogging. Hardwork is the real key to gain success in blogging money making way.

Thanks for success sheet and the eBook offers. May I just add one caveat though, after having been around almost as long, since about 2008: it seems that the return on investment is in decline for newer blogging and monetizing schemes. After all, the amount of readers (and the time they can spend appreciating our work) are not endless. Our own individual time and capacity are also not endless. However, the amount of people who go from passive to active Internet participation (like blogging) has great upward potential still. Something has got to give. And I surmise that with a few exceptions like untapped (really untapped!) niches (and a few new things that pop up every now and then for which there are no incumbents) most bloggers will struggle to reach relevant readership, relevant Alexa or SEMRush ranks, an amount of visitors worth monetizing and so on.